AFM names Warner Records and Atlantic in amended AI pay suit, and puts Udio's Starstruck at the center

The American Federation of Musicians has refiled. In a first amended complaint submitted in late July 2026, the union dropped Warner Music Group Corp. as a defendant, named Warner Records and Atlantic in its place, and built out a new argument around a Udio product nobody can use yet.

It is the same case the union filed on June 5, 2026. The AFM says Universal and Warner owe session musicians a share of the money the labels took from their AI licensing deals with Suno and Udio.

Less than two months in, the union has already been forced to rebuild parts of it.

Which Warner companies the AFM now sues

Warner’s dismissal bid had a technical core, and it worked. The company told Judge Edgardo Ramos it was simply the wrong defendant.

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Warner Music Group Corp. is not a signatory to the SRLA, does not itself own copyrights, was not a plaintiff in the copyright infringement lawsuits against Suno and Udio, and thus does not have licenses with Suno or Udio.

The AFM saw the hole and closed it. It had already signalled the fix in its July 17 opposition brief, where it said it would name Warner Records instead. The amended complaint does so, and adds Atlantic alongside it.

Both are operating labels. Both signed the Sound Recording Labor Agreement. Both hold the recordings at issue. Warner’s cleanest procedural argument is now gone.

Why Udio’s Starstruck sits at the center of the amended complaint

The bigger change is the new emphasis on Starstruck, an upcoming Udio service the AFM treats as its best evidence yet.

The union’s claim rests on Article 21(a) of the SRLA, the “new use” clause. It says labels must pay session players when their recordings get used in a way the original session never covered. Starstruck, the AFM argues, is exactly such a use.

According to the complaint, users are “reportedly required to select a particular artist and recording before generating outputs, and the resulting recordings are reportedly owned by the participating rights holders rather than the user.” The union says this “further demonstrates that these licenses involve a new commercial exploitation of musicians’ performances.”

Read plainly, the argument is about specificity. A model trained on a broad catalogue is one thing. A product where a listener picks a named recording and the label keeps the output is harder to describe as anything other than a new commercial use of that recording.

The information Universal and Warner have not handed over

The third strand is money the union cannot yet count.

Calculating what session players are owed means knowing what the labels actually signed. The AFM says Universal and Warner failed “to provide information required” about the Suno and Udio agreements, and it is suing over that failure alongside the damages claim.

This is not a side issue. Warner has already fought to keep its Suno deal terms sealed in separate litigation. The union is now asking a court to pry open the same numbers from the labour-contract side.

What the refiling changes for session players

Nothing has been decided, and no session musician has been paid. What changed is the shape of the fight.

Warner can no longer end the case on a name. It has to argue the contract, which is the argument the AFM wanted all along, and Digital Music News reported the majors have made clear they would rather the whole thing went away.

Starstruck raises the stakes in the other direction. If a court accepts that picking a named recording inside an AI product is a new use, the ruling reaches past Suno and Udio to every artist-specific AI service the majors licence next.

Full status, parties, and the running timeline live in the AFM v. Universal and Warner case tracker.